


of all the gin joints

by manticoremoons



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Drama, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Jonerys Week, Jonerys Week 2019, Smut, i am hers and she is mine, idk whatever it's a story, some shit happens in a bar, this came into my head and so i wrote it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-26
Updated: 2019-06-26
Packaged: 2020-05-20 04:43:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19369936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manticoremoons/pseuds/manticoremoons
Summary: The entire bar came to a stand-still when the woman walked in.





	of all the gin joints

**Author's Note:**

> So.... instead of finishing up editing the next chapter of my other story, my brain got distracted with this. Have I told y'all that I have the attention span of a literal fruit fly? It's a problem. But I feel like pounding out 5K+ words can earn me some mercy for the delay on the other story, I'll post in a couple of days.  
> Anyway, I honestly started this this morning because the first sentence wouldn't leave me. And when the writing gods are kind, you go with it. So here we are. I haven't got a beta yet (please, anyone, halp) so all mistakes are my own.
> 
> In honour of Jonerys Week 2019 with the prompt: _DAY o3: I Am Hers, She Is Mine._
> 
> I'm not tagging too much so as not to spoil. Hope you enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The entire bar came to a stand-still when the woman walked in.

Everyone except Jon, that is, who stuck to polishing his newly washed glasses and arranging them in a neat tower by the lager fountain.

She was petite, with blonde locks cut into a chin-length bob and a pair of plump red lips painted scarlet. She moved with a sort of regal elegance in her spikey black heels, and dove-grey suit, complete with a silk plum-coloured blouse and sheer stockings underneath the demure knee-length skirt. She wasn’t the type of woman who frequented this kind of dive and it showed by how gobsmacked the locals were.

The rowdy pair of cowhands who’d been playing pool and ribbing each other incessantly as each one tried to con the other out of a couple dollars froze, leering at the blonde beauty as she slinked her way to the bar. Tormund, Jon’s part-time bar-tender, occasional chef and unnecessary bouncer paused in the middle of telling some ribald tale about fucking a bear in the cold tundra up North because apparently that was a thing he’d once done. Jon was never quite sure if Tormund was telling the truth with stories like that, but he laughed at the punchlines all the same. A gang of bikers from an MC that rode through a few times a year were settled in the corner with their old ladies, patches emblazoned proudly on their leather jackets. They let out some hoots and hollers that the foreign woman ignored and that had _their_ women frowning in annoyance. Some of the grizzled truckers who liked to pass by the Night’s Watch on their long, winding routes on the trade highways from down South as far as the Crownlands, through the Vale and all the way up to the Bay of Seals carrying goods, mail and the odd hitch-hiker, halted their idle chatter. Some of the kids from the town five exits away stopped their intense games of darts and foosball to eyeball the stranger. 

The Night’s Watch offered a welcome pit stop, sitting almost perfectly on the crossroads point between North and South, splitting the continent in half. It was a gin-soaked haven from the blustering cold winds coming off the coast of The Bite. A little out of the way, far-off from the capital city of The Twins. But as the only spot to get a good beer, decent wings and chips, and some nice company on a 30-mile stretch of wilderness interrupted by dingy abandoned mining towns and a struggling ranch or two, it was a somewhat popular joint for regular folk with nothing much better to do.

People didn’t call The Twins province the _Toilet Bowl of Westeros_ for nothing.

The woman finally reached the bar, purposefully oblivious to all the fuss she’d raised by merely existing and perched herself on a stool. Thankfully, the rest of the patrons went back to whatever it was they were doing and quit their awkward gawking.

“My Google maps told me this is the only place within a ten-mile radius where I can get something to eat but the sign says, ‘no fine dining.’ How annoying,” she mumbled to no one in particular as she stared at her phone screen, clearly believing her Google maps had led her astray.

Jon kept right on polishing his glasses. They’d just come out the washer after all, still steaming warm, and he liked to keep his bar in tip top shape.

“Can I get you something to drink, ma’am?”

She met his gaze before hers slid down ever so slowly to take him in.

Jon was a simple man, wearing his typical workday outfit of a black Henley, ratty and torn from wear and some jeans, his too-long hair caught up in a bun at the nape of his neck because he was too lazy to do much else with it. But she might as well have undressed him the way she was looking at him. He was no stranger to random women eyeing him up, it had been happening ever since he grew into his hair, but he couldn’t help the curl of heat in his gut and a little preening at this one’s open admiration.

“See something you like?”

She laughed, a bright tinkling sound that made a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. “Maybe. But I think I’d like to start with a martini. Splash of cranberry if you have any.”

“Aye, we’ve got cranberry juice, my lady—even in the boonies up here.” He’d started stocking up on the stuff almost a year ago. Not many of his regulars drank it. They were more beer and straight spirits types than fancy cocktails you’d find in a city bar. But Jon always liked to give the people what they want.

She arched her left eyebrow at that, again that sense of regal superiority about her that should have been annoying but mainly made him want to chuckle. A rarity given he’d gotten himself a reputation as a grouch (complete with a nickname ‘miserable crow’, courtesy of Tormund) on account of his apparent distaste for smiling.

“Well, that’s good. I was worried from the looks of this place that I was in some kind of… uncivilised backwoods watering hole.” She said that with a disparaging look at the surrounds although there was a hint of amusement on her pretty crimson lips that let him know she wasn’t being completely insulting of his business establishment. He’d worked hard to build this place up after all. It had been a godawful rubbish dump when he found it.

She took a sip of her drink and turned around to eye the rest of the bar.

“You in the area for long?” He wasn’t much of a talker at the best of times, but he could carry some conversation when he needed to as part of the job.

She tilted her head with a half-shrug but didn’t turn back as she answered. “A few days, give or take. Haven’t really decided yet.”

“Hm,” Jon grunted. He was stopped from asking any further questions by one of the cowhands who’d been playing pool. The man swaggered up to the woman with the conceit of someone who thought they were a real prize and offered to buy her a drink.

Jon couldn’t even see her face, but he knew she wasn’t having it. Instead she nodded her head at the half-full glass in her hand, her voice a little stiff. “As you can see, I’m well-watered.”

“Oh, but you’ll be dying of thirst soon after you get to know me, baby.” The line was execrable but Harlan, the cowhand’s name, didn’t seem to notice. He waved a hand towards Jon as he declared with an arrogant tilt of his chin, “Put her tab on me, Snow. Can’t have a pretty woman buying her own drinks, now can we.”

Jon nodded. The man was an idiot. But he’d take a money from an idiot any day of the week.

The woman took in a deep breath, and said with a sultry pout at Harlan, who was leaning a little too far against the bar, probably hoping to glimpse a bit of cleavage under that silky blouse, “I have a better idea—how about I join your game of pool.”

“You know how to play, little lady?” Harlan asked with a patronising smirk.

She shrugged, and Jon could see how her eyes had widened with an almost girlish coyness. “Oh, I’m _okay_ at it—maybe you can show me how it’s done. Big, strong man like you.”

Looking like a fat cat that was about to eat an unwitting canary, Harlan held his hand out for the woman to take so he could lead her to the tables.

She took it and followed.

No one else in the bar seemed to notice the sly, scarlet-tipped smile she sent over her shoulder at Jon.

Nor did they notice the way he watched her, eyes keen as a wolf, and twice as possessive.

 

## *

 

“How many times have I told you not to hustle my customers when you come here?” Jon muttered as he slammed Dany against the door of his flat, which was just above the bar. His fingers moved for her blouse, unbuttoning it with feverish haste. He buried his nose in between her breasts just to breathe her in for a second.

“Oh, _come on_ ,” Dany said on a gasp when his tongue found her nipple through her lacy bra. “He was begging for it.”

“I think you fleeced him out of two months’ pay,” Jon said around the tip of her plump tit, his other hand sneaking up to grasp the other one. Gods, he’d always loved her breasts. The perfect handful, and all for him.

“Well then, maybe he’ll learn next time not to underestimate any random woman he comes across.” She was running her fingers through his hair, flinging the tie away so it would fall to his shoulders the way she’d always liked it, so she could scratch at his scalp in a way that made him groan.

He yanked her shirt out of her skirt, and dragged it off her, standing upright so he could kiss her on the lips and lick whatever was left of that lipstick off. She tasted a little sour, like vodka, and a little sweet from the cranberry juice she’d had earlier and something that was all her. When he tugged extra hard to get the shirt off she made a pained grunt that had him jerking back to look at her in concern.

“Dislocated shoulder. It’s fine, _I’m fine_ ,” she rushed to say when his brow creased. “Missy set it a couple days ago. The mission went well, and the world is free of one more bad guy—or a whole organisation of bad people.”

It was times like this that Jon hated their agreement, made all those nights ago on the back of a dangerous mission off the coast of Volantis. They’d been in the game for a long time, both of them. She even longer than he had since she’d been plucked off the street by the firm and trained as a child. Jon had only joined their ranks after he got himself kicked out of the army and labelled a traitor to his people for trying to help a community of immigrants squatting way up North beyond the border.

There wasn’t much left to do for an out-of-work officer with near perfect marksmanship except a life of crime. Or, as he’d chosen, a life as a spy and sniper for D.R.A.C.O.N.I.S., a non-governmental intelligence agency that was so secretive, not even that useless fat bastard of a king currently ruling Westeros, Robert Baratheon, was aware of its existence. The military had no knowledge of the organisation, and neither did the coalition government that led the free cities in Essos despite the fact that a lot of the work consisted of cleaning up their fuck-ups. He’d become _Codename: White Wolf_ , known as the _Ghost_ in some circles, built himself a reputation for his lethal combat skills and even more lethal way with a rifle.

On that night, they’d lain in bed, sweat cooling on their skin, limbs intertwined, the smell of gunpowder in the air mingling with the scent of some of the most intense sex he’d ever had and made a promise to each other, dressed only in the rings that they never wore in public but had exchanged before a heart tree, mere weeks before. A wedding fit for a bygone era but perfect enough for them.

“We have to make a life for ourselves outside of this,” she’d said as her fingers traced the scars on his chest. Scars he’d gotten long before he knew her but that still made her eyes flicker with sadness at the thought that she might have lost him before they'd ever met. “We can’t do this forever.”

“I know,” he’d whispered, almost too afraid to say it out loud. There were ears everywhere. That was the first thing he’d learned when he’d joined the firm. He lifted her delicate hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles and then the slender white gold band on her ring finger. He turned her hand over to press another loving kiss against her palm. “Varys will never let us go, you know that.”

She’d sat up then, the sheet falling from her, and baring her chest, covered in bruises he’d made with his tongue and teeth and hands minutes earlier. There were other marks on her body though. Older ones. A star-shaped one just below her shoulder where she’d been shot on one of her first missions, another just below her right breast where she’d been stabbed. Every single one of them was beautiful because every single one meant she’d _survived_. And he’d been lucky enough to find her and love her.

She’d leaned down to nip at his lower lip, a soft sweet kiss.

“Then we have to learn how to trick a Spider.”

The first part of the plan had involved faking his own death. A difficult feat but not impossible as they’d proved. He’d gotten himself shot on a helicopter during a raiding mission, and washed up on the shores of Dorne, then made his way up hitch-hiking to this unlikely spot where it wasn't so easy to run into one of Varys' birds, not this far up North, for sure. At the time it was just a miserable bar called The Flea. He’d funnelled money he’d saved through twenty dummy accounts to the debt-ridden owner, and bought it, started to build a little life for them both.

For Dany, it wasn’t so easy to escape the web that was her life. Varys made sure of that with agents like her and Missandei, and even Grey Worm, who’d been caught up in the firm since childhood. So, they’d agreed, they would wait a while before attempting to claim her freedom.

A few months had turned into a year, and then another. Sometimes, Jon even wondered whether she wanted to get out. Or perhaps there was a part of her that was so attached to being _Codename: Silver Dragon_ that she didn’t really want to leave.

But, there was one thing he was sure of and that was that _she loved him_.

Dany, Daenerys, the woman she was underneath all the guns and blood, the scars and stiletto blades, _loved him_. She would live for him and for this thing they had together, but most importantly, she was _willing to die_ just as he had if it meant they could build a new life from the ashes. _Together_.

They’d tried to stay away from each other at the start of it, just after he’d ‘died’ and she’d continued her job and plotting her own demise. Worried that any slip-up would blow the whole game to smithereens and Varys would have their heads.

But the longer it went on, the more impossible it became to stay apart. She’d not been able to, and he’d been driven to the brink of madness without her.

So, every few months, sometimes weeks, she’d show up. Most times, she’d sneak right into this flat and he’d find her on his bed asleep, or naked and ready and waiting for him. Sometimes, she’d come into the bar like she’d done today, in disguise. But that was too risky. Other times, they’d meet somewhere. She’d send an encrypted, self-destructing message days in advance, and he’d leave the bar to Tormund and head out for a few days of ‘brooding time,’ as his friend had dubbed it. If _brooding_ meant meeting up with his wife in some rural motel or on a camping ground in the mountains, and fucking her until neither of them could walk, and making her endless promises of _Soonsoonsoon_ , then that was exactly what he did.

But they couldn’t continue like this forever. They both knew it.

“Hey, hey,” she said softly, drawing him close so she could kiss the frown on his forehead away. “Come back to me.”

Jon bowed his head, gripped with tension. “I’m just—I’m sick of waiting.”

“Me too, my love.” She laid her head against his and stared, unblinking. “We don’t have to wait much longer. Missy’s helped me—and the plan is ready.”

He didn’t let himself get too happy—just yet. “How long?”

“Two months.”

“Are you sure?”

“I _swear_ it. I swear it on my mother.” Her eyes, almost crystalline blue in the dim light of his entrance-way, shone with conviction. She was the Silver Dragon, she was Daenerys—he knew when she had that look on her face that she was true and honest. And would let nothing and no one stand in her way.

He could wait that long. He _could_.

He’d try at least.

He willed himself to not let the worry consume him now when he had her in his arms. He’d have time enough for it when she’d gone and left him, again. Leaning in to take her mouth in a demanding kiss, he hoisted her up easily until her legs straddled his hips, her skirt riding up, and stumbled his way to his bedroom.

The mattress springs creaked in protest when he dropped her on it. He didn’t pay them any mind, kneeling on the lushly carpeted floor so he could pull her in close, splay her legs open. He could smell her arousal already, and when he hauled her to the edge of the bed, he could see it, the wetness on her inner thighs and dampening her flimsy lace panties.

Hungry as the wolf D.R.A.C.O.N.I.S had named him, he shoved them aside and ducked to kiss her pretty cunt, nuzzling at the neatly-trimmed triangle of hair, already moist with her dew. The sweet-salty taste of her drew him in like an addict who’d been long-denied his fix. He licked the seam of her, savouring the flavour before swirling his tongue on her clit, wrapping his lips around it so he could suck.

She cried out. Knowing she could because the bar had emptied out and there was no one around for miles. Her hands came down to the back of his head to guide him, her hips moving frantically against his mouth. He brought his left hand into play, his forefinger slipping inside the tight clutch of her, marvelling at how hot and slick she was inside _for him_.

“Please, please,” she whined, already so close. He could feel it in the way her inner muscles hugged at his fingers—now three—pumping in and out of her, a foretaste of what he’d soon be doing with his cock.

Lapping at her clit, he curved his fingers just the way he knew she liked. And like pulling the trigger on a gun, she went off, hips arching off the bed as she near-screamed his name.

They used to make a game of it. Timing just how fast she went off when he used his mouth on her. All these years later, and she still exploded in stunned pleasure in a matter of minutes.

Jon clambered to his feet to shuck his clothes off. She was recovering from her orgasm, still panting, her clothes askew, her nipples winking at him through the bra he’d only half-dragged off her, so he could mouth at her, and her cunt blush-pink and soaking. But as soon as she saw he was disrobing, she started to do the same.

“Leave the stockings and shoes on,” Jon growled as he watched her, his own hand wrapping around his hard cock, already rearing to get inside her.

She did as told, and when she was naked except for those sheer thigh-high stockings and her heels, she moved back against his pillows, her eyes hypnotised by his hand fisting his length. He wasn’t an exhibitionist by any means, but he liked the look on her face, the way she nibbled on her lower lip as if she’d love to taste the pre-cum he was using to slick his palm, the way her pupils were almost blacked out with desire as her hungry gaze ran over his form.

There would be time for that. Right now, he felt as though he would die if he didn’t get inside her.

He placed one knee on the mattress and prowled his way towards her, his cock hanging obscenely between his legs, heavy with want. Once he was comfortably between her legs, he leaned in to lick at her mouth and then bite at her swollen lips. Taking himself in hand, he traced the tip of his cock along the seam of her slick pussy, slowly enough that they both groaned at the sensation.

“You’re so wet for me, _fuck_.”

“I’ve been waiting for this for so long. I missed you,” she breathed out. Her hands gripped at his shoulders, tugging him close so she could breathe the words into his mouth. “It’s not the same when I touch myself. I need you to _fill_ me. To fuck me. Please.”

She never begged for anything, he knew. Except for this, saving her very latent submissiveness for when they were in bed with each other, wrapped in the intimacy of love. Even though she didn’t have to. He’d give her all of him again and again, however she wanted, until the day he bloody well died. He filed away the thought of her touching herself and thinking of him when they were apart, he’d make her do it for him later and watch.

“I love you,” he said, plain and honest.

He didn’t wait for her to respond before he sheathed himself, sliding right down to the hilt on the first thrust.

They both let out tortured sounds at the feel of it. Every single time it felt like the first time. Back then, in a safehouse outside Starfall, they’d taken each other in a frenzy of post-mission lust, his left arm still bleeding from a bullet graze and her with a black eye from a hand-to-hand with one of their targets. This time, there was none of the frenzy, but the passion was no less intense.

Gripping her thigh and notching it over his hip so he could sink in that much deeper, he started to work himself in and out. With each plunge, she whimpered, her eyes rolling back deliriously. She seemed barely aware of what she was saying. _I missed you. I need you. You feel so good, my sweet. Please. Fuck, right there. Right there. Harder, Yes—_

Jon let himself go then. Fucking into her with forceful lunges that had her clutching for purchase on his headboard, and the spikes of her heels digging into his arse so hard he’d be feeling it come morning. His orgasm was chasing him, tightening up in his balls and the pit of his belly.

He looked at her with her head thrown back as she took her pleasure. He drew a pitched shriek out of her with every single thrust, holding nothing back. He palmed her breast, pinching her nipple until it pouted up at him, then he drew his right hand up to her neck, pressing down on her windpipe. Not hard enough to hurt her but just hard _enough_. She was gasping now, air trapped, as her eyelids flew open so she could stare at him, and her plush lips stretched into a carnal grin that he answered in kind.

They were creatures of violence and death, both. It only made sense that even in this, in the heat of fucking, their most basic instincts would make themselves known.

He lifted her leg up, notching it over his elbow as they raced each other to the finish line. He growled as the tingle started up at the base of his spine. He was close. _So close_.

She came then, a wild cry echoing against the walls of his bedroom and a wet gush over his cock that triggered his own orgasm. He filled her with his release, so much of it that he could feel their combined pleasure leaking out between them.

Breath rasping out of his throat, he fell on top of her, careful not to crush her completely. The hand he’d had on her throat loosened until he was merely cradling her, holding her close as her pulse trembled under his palm, struggling to catch his own breath.

When he was recovered enough to pull out of her warmth and roll onto his side, he drew her with him, keeping her close. He could do nothing else. If he had a choice, she’d never be parted from him.

He gazed at her, heart full. He sometimes wondered if it was normal to feel so much for another person. To feel so complete and yet _undone_ by love, to have this one other human with so much power over him. But when she opened her own eyes, lashes casting shadows on the tops of her cheeks, he saw the same look reflected to him.

It was a heady feeling. A frightening one, too.

 _He could lose her_. At any moment, he could. He shuddered to think what Varys would do if he found out. Not to himself. He could die tomorrow, and the only reason it would torment him was the knowledge that she’d be in danger. But if the spymaster found out and hurt her while Jon still had breath in his body, he would burn the whole word down. The thoughts were too heavy for now, so he did his best to tamp them down, just for the moment.

He nudged his thumb against her chin, already reddened with beard-burn courtesy of him. Tracing her kiss-swollen mouth he said into the quiet.

“I’m holding you to your promise, sweetheart.”

“I expect nothing less,” she murmured. And he could see that she understood.

 

## *

 

It had been six months.

Jon had started to lose it by the third. When he received no call. No encrypted message. No visitation. No fucking raven-delivered note. _Nothing_.

He’d become an absolute terror at managing the bar, forgetting to balance the accounts right, being an ornery asshole to almost everyone. He’d been forced to leave Tormund to do most of the work lest he started picking fights with anyone that so much as looked at him wrong down there.

Instead, he’d spend hours scouring every intelligence channel he still had access to, using his collection of burner phones to contact what was left of his connections to the underworld for some bit of news. _Any_ news. He’d called on _The Onion Knight_ , an old friend and smuggler of information and _goods_ —mostly weapons for out-of-work spies like him—and Davos had told him in no uncertain terms that he’d heard nothing on the open seas.

He’d even risked contacting _No One_ , a thing he hadn’t done for years much as he missed his own bloody sister. But if anyone would know how to find the unfindable it was her, the most fearsome assassin-for-hire in the world, Arya Stark. As a face-changer, she was on every watch-list there was but no one had been able to catch her. Even she’d come up empty-handed. And that’s when he’d started to get really frightened. The fear almost paralysing in its potency, bleeding through his veins like quicksilver.

It wasn’t even like there was some notice or sign that _Silver Dragon_ was dead or disappeared. There was just nothing. And that was even more dangerous. Because it meant someone was making a special effort to keep every single channel clear, to make it seem like there hadn’t been a ripple of activity. If another agent had taken her out, they wouldn’t keep it quiet—they’d light up the airwaves and brandish their victory like it was a trophy. So that ruled that out. But the alternatives were no less distressing.

He could sit and do nothing. That had never been his way.

Jon had already booked a ticket under his alias, Wylan Thorne. He would be in Astapor—the last place she’d been seen on a mission to assassinate a drug smuggling minister—come tomorrow. He’d spent the evening cleaning his guns. The slow, methodical routine had been one of the only things that could calm him down besides getting into unnecessary punch-ups with some of the bikers who came by for a drink at the Night’s Watch. Unload the clips, disassemble, swipe the bolt, the pungent stench of oil biting at his nostrils, swab the barrel, reassemble, aim.

His fingers twitched with the urge to pull the trigger and fire. At something. _Anything_. Just to feel the familiar satisfaction of a job well done. Just to make someone else hurt the way he did inside.

He’d once told her, on a mission in the far, far east in Yi Ti where they’d been sent to break into a cell of trafficked women and children, stored as ‘merchandise’ for the thriving black-market organ trade that spanned as far as Westeros, what he’d do if he lost her.

They’d been checking their weapons in the safehouse D.R.A.C.O.N.I.S secured for them, standing side-by-side, a small arsenal strapped to their leather-bound bodies already. She preferred pistols, a pair of almost dainty Kolbiris she liked to call Drogon and Rhaegal, that she used to devastating effect at close range. As her cover, he would stay hidden in the trees or at an elevated point with his trusty Mauser.

It had been almost fun prepping together for a mission. He’d loved her any way he could have her, really. He loved her naked against his sheets with his name on her lips, and he loved her standing beside him, razor-edged before battle, the promise of the vengeance and death she’d deliver to this latest enemy glittering in her eyes.

“Be careful out there, I’ll have your six. But we don’t know how big the security for this cell is or what’s coming for us.”

“I’m always careful, my love.” She’d said it with one of her dimpled smiles, a little crooked, and entirely fearless.

Ever since he’d realised his feelings for her, he was full of little else but fear. Fear that she’d get hurt. Fear that he would. Fear that this would all be taken away from him and he’d be alone again.

“You’re _not_ , and you know it, sweetheart.” The endearment was something he only called her when they were alone. 

His old friends from his previous life in the army would no doubt be laughing at him right now. Back then, _he’d_ been the kind of soldier who took needless risks, flung himself into battle like a rabid dog with little care for his own safety. It had gotten him reprimanded several times by the top brass up at the Wall. But now, years later, he found himself being the voice of caution and reason to a woman who had all his recklessness and then worse: a fiery and unquenchable thirst for _justice_. And with a case like this one where innocent women and children, the poorest of the poor, were being harvested for body parts to be sold for the highest bidder on the black market—her fury was palpable. She wanted to make them pay and she wanted to save lives. But mostly, she wanted to make them pay.

It was one of the things he loved most about her that keen desire to make the world better in some small way. That she could be an instrument of death but also one of salvation. The lines were always murky in their line of work, an occupational hazard. But it made a warm and proud feeling eddy through him to see her lit up to do the right thing and use her incomparable skills to protect those who needed it.

The fact remained, however, that they hadn’t known what kind of shitshow they were walking into and he’d needed her to be careful.

So, as she strapped her last blade into her thigh holster, he’d grabbed her arm and pulled her in close, nuzzling at the space just under chin before he gave her a hard look. Tracing his gloved fingers against her cheek he’d said, quiet and firm, “You can’t get yourself hurt, all right. I don’t—if you do, I’ll not be able to handle it.”

That was euphemistic talk for: _he’d lose his fucking mind_.

She must have seen it for herself, how shredded the tether of control was for him. How easy it would be for the wolf within to go mad. She’d kissed him gently, her lips a little salty with sweat, but no less intoxicating. When she’d tried to lean back, he’d only deepened it, laving his tongue against hers. They were both breathless when they drew apart.

“I’ll be careful, I swear it on my mother.”

There wasn’t much that Daenerys Targaryen held dear but the memory of her mother, a woman she spoke about only rarely and in the dead of night in whispers so no one else could hear, was one of them.

He’d nodded. And she’d kept her promise then.

Now, he had waited for months. _Months_. And this second promise she’d made was broken.

And he was prepared to burn the whole world down because of it.

 

## *

Jon was tending bar one last time before he left. Whatever remnants of the world class spy he had in him had realised he needed to at least put up the appearance of normalcy. Tormund was under the impression that he was heading off for an extended holiday. A road trip through Essos, the kind of adventure every Westerosi experiencing a mid-life crisis seemed to go through at some point. See the sights, fuck a woman or man or both in every port, and all the rest of it. It was as good a cover story as any.

He polished the glasses with absent-minded attention. His brain occupied with running through his itinerary and the list of people he would be visiting with questions and the barrel of his gun as soon as he landed.

As he turned to the little sink, he considered pouring himself a whiskey for old times’ sake. He had no idea if he’d ever be back here. Hell, he had no idea if he’d live through it. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to, if he was honest.

When he heard one of the stools scraping back as someone sat in it, he called over his shoulder, “Be with you in a sec,” as he finished wringing one of the water-logged cloths to wipe down the counter.

A throat cleared, and then a soft voice drawled, “You know, it’s very annoying. My Google maps told me this is the only place within a ten-mile radius where I can get something to eat but the sign says, ‘no fine dining.’”

Jon froze.

His heart twisted in his chest, so hard he thought he might be having an attack.

He looked up at the mirror on the wall beside the sink shelves that allowed him to have a full view of the whole place even when his back was turned, and there, behind him, was a woman with dark shoulder-length hair, tousled as though she’d driven a long distance with her car top down. She had eyes that sparkled cobalt-blue with speckles of gold and a deep violet, and her lips were painted a striking red.

When she grinned, warm and tender, her gaze tracing his face with the care of an artist beholding a well-loved and sorely missed painting, he felt himself smile back.

 

## fin

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Feedback is cool.


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